STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- For as long as people can remember, the South Shore destinations were idyllic, waterfront playgrounds for Staten Islanders with the time and means to enjoy them.

But Sandy's vicious swells changed history at the Great Kills Marina and a few miles south at Puglia by the Sea restaurant, leaving behind crippling destruction that seemed nothing short of surreal.

Boats got tossed like Tinker Toys in Monday night's surge. Tuesday, boat owners and the curious walked gape-mouthed along Mansion Avenue and neighboring streets, marveling at dozens of vessels strewn in awkward angles across the land, pushed into homes and up against restaurants, some having come to rest blocks away from the water.

"I had a feeling this is what was going to happen when the storm was so big," said Carmine Aloia, the governor of Richmond County Yacht Club, whose handsome 35-foot boat Egg Hopper lay on its side on the ground near the decimated club.

Like many others, his had been tied to the floating docks. But when the surge grew higher than eight feet, it brought the docks over the piling, releasing them and the attached vessels. Unmoored, the boats and the wooden docks slammed into the vessels tied down in the stationary marina. And as they swept toward land, the boats destroyed the permanent docks, the boats tied down there, and even the hallmark gazebo at the end of the plank of the marina. Then everything ended up on the land.

"It's like a movie scene," said Connie Petersen of Richmond, as she and her husband surveyed the damage to their 8-foot boat, Valor, which had landed on McKee Avenue more than a block from where they had it on land in the Mansion Marina. ---

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The owner of the Marina Café, by Tuesday afternoon, was offering free drinks, having lost much of his restaurant to water damage.

"I was shocked and awed; I didn't think it was going to be this bad," said Joey D'Alessio. "I'd say 50, 70 percent is gone, electrical, everything."

But his was nothing like the decimation at Puglia by the Sea, in Annadale, the year-old restaurant built on the site of the former Carmen's Restaurant, which had simply washed into the water.

"To be honest, when I saw it this morning, I was disgusted; I cried," said owner Ben Marcuso, who had stayed until 9 p.m. Monday night watching the rise and lash at the windows. When the surge began breaking glass, he and his son ran to their cars and left.

He walked through what was left of the restaurant he had finished renovating just ten months ago , showing patches of asphalt where the parking lot had been, a three-wall shelter, the glass from the windows, gone and washed away.

"It is like a bomb went off," he said. "Like a war zone."

Still, he said he will do whatever it takes to bring his restaurant back to life. "I am going to build bigger and better," he said. "Another storm like this, it's not going to happen again."---Follow @siadvance on Twitter